


A War Story Is A Black Space

by kimaracretak



Category: Nikita (TV 2010)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-14
Updated: 2014-01-14
Packaged: 2018-01-08 17:58:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1135727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/pseuds/kimaracretak
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Love means never asking the other to speak of the wars inside, in the dark secret spaces. They understand this, but it takes much longer for them to understand it goes the other way round as well, and the silence where they don’t ask questions is the first time they say I (want to) love you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A War Story Is A Black Space

**Author's Note:**

> porn battle 2013 | prompts: lonely, companionship, breakfast, Division, Amanda | probably more like 95% feelings and 5% porn
> 
> (casually takes an eternity and a half to transfer fic from livejournal over here)

When Owen comes back, Nikita doesn't believe it at first. Doesn't want to believe, at first, because she knows the threads of their story too intimately by now. He'll pass out on her couch while she stitches him back together with steady hands and concerned eyes that will never quite be able to meet his guilty ones. He'll stay there as long as it takes for them to complete the mission: a day, maybe a week. And then he'll leave, reassuring her that he'll take care of himself, that he knows he always has a place in whatever camp she's managed to carve out for her little renegade band this time around.

And.

Nikita doesn't know this, but on the very very short list of things Owen knows – a list that doesn't even include his real name anymore – this is number one. He has done unforgivable things to her, but he believes her without a moment's hesitation when she tells him to call if he needs anything _anything._ He knows that she is a better person than he, that she has done the impossible, yet again: she has forgiven him. (It will be a long time before he realizes how much that forgiveness cost her, how she has forgiven him but never herself).

But.

Nikita doesn't know this, so when she realizes that Owen is back, and that they'll work together again, she wishes for a heartbeat that he hadn't come back because now that he has, she'll have to face how much she's missed him, how much she needs him. She wants to touch his face, his arms, his hips – all those parts of him she's held together with a needle and thread and sometimes just plain willpower – and reassure herself that he's not been broken beyond repair (but that's a lie, a pretty pretty fallacy, because he was Division just like her and if you've been in Division you've absolutely been broken beyond repair already).

Then.

She wants, then, to be sure that it's his body that's not broken beyond repair, that all the bones and blood that make up the secret places inside his skin are still where they should be. Or at least that she could put them in their places with a minimum of pain. But that is only what she tells herself, because what she really wants to say is: _stay, please, you are the only other one of us who remembers what it was like to be in prison and to be be stolen from there and made to kill for Division and who I can talk to_. (Later, when she learns how Amanda stole his memories, she will look back on this moment and marvel at her selfishness).

*

There is an empty space inside of her and she cannot remember what used to fit there. Perhaps it's the girl she used to be before she lived on the streets, or before she pulled the trigger for the first time, or before she came to Division. Or perhaps it's not an empty space after all, perhaps it's a thing: the evil remnants of that mingled pride and joy in killing that is just one more of Amanda's gifts she'll never be rid of. She wants to rip it out of her body sometimes, just so she can hold the cold hard rock in her hand and say to it, _I know you, I can name you, and you can never harm me again._ There are other times when she flinches away from the mere thought of it, as though she can make it go away by simply pretending it's not there.

But.

Owen has one as well. It's not something they talk about (they don't often need words, and for this, they need them even less), but like recognizes like and broken calls to broken even across past sins. She doesn't ask how he deals with it, she doesn't need to know and he doesn't want to tell. He never asks, either, though she knows he sees right through her pretenses. Love means never asking the other to speak of the wars inside, in the dark secret spaces. They understand this, but it takes much longer for them to understand it goes the other way round as well, and the silence where they don't ask questions is the first time they say _I (want to) love you._

And.

She is not surprised when he slips into her bed the first night of his stay, not surprised when she is unable to sleep until she presses against him, thin t-shirt against bare skin and legs interlocked and the dark places inside each of them aligned so perfectly that they cancel each other out, just for a moment.

He makes her breakfast the next morning, and the sight of him in her kitchen, frying eggs like he belongs there, pulls at something in her heart. He shouldn't look so at ease there, just like it shouldn't have felt so right to fall asleep in his arms last night. She has a boyfriend, she tells herself sternly, and yes, he's in London right now, but she loves him, she loves him and they're going to build a life together away from all the pain and terrible memories. Right? _Right,_ she thinks, but even then so much of her wants to say: _No._

So.

She sits down as he finishes cooking, and they talk about Alex, the mission – anything but these strange new spaces they've found themselves occupying for each other, too wrong to feel so perfect. But the shift in their relationship is not so easily denied. When Nikita hands him the bowl of grapes, their hands brush and they stay connected for just an instant too long, the fruit suspended awkwardly between them. When Owen leans forward to playfully feed her a strip of bacon, she acts on some impossible desire, grabs the bacon out of his hand and takes his fingers in her mouth instead. She smiles around his hand, enjoying the salty taste of the bacon on his calloused fingers, thinks about laughing it off as a joke – but then their eyes meet, and it's clear it's not a joke, or a game, and they're perilously close to the edge of something dangerous and new. With the wordless language they've grown so accustomed to he dares her to slip – no, to jump over the edge with him. And in her sunny kitchen, the memory of Michael reduced to a shadow being slowly erased by the light of all of the _could-be_ s – she can't. Not now, not yet. She releases his fingers with a sigh that's equal parts regret and embarrassment and ducks her head to let her hair curtain her face. The levity of the morning is gone, replaced with the cold weight of things unsaid. (And here, here is where their secret language fails them, here is where one of them needs to say, _soon,_ or maybe _we don't have to,_ or maybe, _I want this_ _._ But they don't speak, and they will spend the next few months off balance.)

When he leaves again, mission complete, day saved, and heroes rescued, Michael comes back. The man she knows she could love is replaced by the man she thinks she _should_ love. She feels so very guilty, and so very alone. She wishes for one brief, horrible second that she could talk to Amanda again, and that Amanda would make it all be okay like she used to.

 

*

She asks Michael to give her time to think about his engagement ring, and tries not to think too much about the hurt in his eyes, or the relief in Alex's. It's not that she doesn't love him, Nikita rationalizes, but that she doesn't want to make another promise she won't be able to keep. She's had too many promises broken, by her actions and by those of others, that she shies away from commitment like a horse from a spider (and oh, if only it were that easy, if she could only stamp out all of her self-doubt like the horse could kill the spider).

But.

There is another voice in her head, and this one is Amanda's and it is the one that speaks the truths she never wants and always needs. It's this voice that tells her that she will never be able to give Michael the _yes_ he so desperately wants, that ever since she came back from Brandt's dungeon the _yes_ was an impossibility. How is she supposed to stay with the one who wants to fix her so badly he won't give her the space she needs to fix herself? When she lies next to him at night, she cannot help but feel that something irreversible has shifted between them, that they can never recreate the idea of a future together that they once spent so long lovingly constructing. She cannot stop herself from listing people who understand more than Michael does, cannot stop herself from wanting Owen back.

And.

When Nikita tells Michael _no,_ he says he understands, but he also says he needs space, and he vanishes for a while to a new apartment, to long, undercover field missions. “Space,” Nikita laughs bitterly to Alex soon after, “our problem was always that there was too much space between us, and he never realized that, did he?”

And Alex, ever ready to support her best friend, holds her close on the couch in front of trashy soap operas and too-sweet ice cream, and dredges up all the nasty Russian curses she can remember to lay on Michael. Nikita's laughter slowly becomes real, but there are some days when the specter is too solid, or when reports come in that Michael's gotten himself into some new scrape, and she ends up on Alex's couch, or in some coffeehouse, or an abandoned corridor in Division, torn between cursing and crying and curling up with Alex and never leaving again. It is one of those sessions that Owen wanders into, exploring the dust covered nooks and crannies of this new Division to see what stories there are waiting to be rewritten. “Who's the _egoistichnyy ublyudok?_ ” he asks cheerfully, before the two women turn to him, fury in Alex's eyes and tears in Nikita's, and he realizes he's just stumbled into much more than he'd bargained for. Alex looks ready to turn the fury fully on him for interrupting their moment, but Nikita lays a gentle hand on her arm. _Wait._

So.

Nikita tells him everything she can bring herself to share, and in the silences around her words he fills in the gaps to her story. She asks for nothing, he offers everything (just as she once did), and somehow, he ends up taking residence in her home as well as her heart. Every morning, he wakes up first and makes her breakfast and this, this is the domesticity she wanted with Michael. The funny thing is, she's not upset she's found it with Owen instead. She's _glad._ Sometimes he ends up on the couch and sometimes in her bed; sometimes they do nothing but rest in quiet appreciation of the others' companionship, sometimes they mutually agree that tonight will be a night spent letting lips and hands map the secret curves and planes of each others' bodies, learning to speak a third language together, that of soft gasps and cries of pleasure.

The night they learn Amanda has captured Michael is one such night. Tomorrow they will go after him, tomorrow Nikita will pull her gun on Amanda and she will not shoot her because she is tired of killing and past forgiving herself for doing so. Tomorrow, perhaps Owen will pull his gun as well, and he will not shoot either, because Nikita taught him that there is a life beyond the recoil of a 9 mil and the acrid smell of gunsmoke.

But.

Tomorrow doesn't bear thinking about now, not when Owen's fingers dip between her legs and make her arch and shudder against the sheets. Not when she brings those same fingers to her mouth and swirls her tongue around them just like she did in a sunlit kitchen that's far away in time, but not in memory, and this time they taste so much _better_. Not when Owen fills all the empty spaces inside her inside of her so easily, easing the constant clamor of the war stories racing through her veins. He feels the same, she knows, she can see it in his half-closed eyes and feel it in the way his hips rock against hers. And it feels right, in a way it's never been before.

  
*

 

“I never thought Amanda would do this to us,” she says quietly afterward, and Owen tenses reflexively, every muscle taut like a bow string ready to snap at the mention of Amanda. “I thought that she loved me, you know, and that I loved her back, that we were going to be…inseparable, always.” She leans forward, rests her forehead against his as she struggles to put one last thing into words. Owen waits. “Whatever we had, though, this – this is what's real.”

There's a lot of things Owen could say here, things that he heard while Amanda had him captive and things he has pieced together from missions and black boxes and just by watching how Amanda's eyes change when Nikita's name comes up. He could tell her that Amanda feels the loss of her every moment she's awake; she still mourns her glittering protege; she wears the earrings that Nikita gave her in Berlin; she would give up Ari for her. But he doesn't say any of them because he knows, and Nikita knows, that just as their pasts with Amanda are another shared war story, they are not the sort of war stories that can be spoken of here. So instead he kisses her again, and again and again, and lets each kiss be a reminder that right here, right now, she has someone who accepts the person she was, and is, and wants to be.

(This time, he doesn't leave.

This time, she doesn't feel alone.

This time, she doesn't feel guilty.)


End file.
